lchemists,--you
understand, make gold, you know, or what looks like it, sometimes with
the head of a king or queen or of Liberty to embellish one side of the
piece.--Don't I remember hearing him shut a door and lock it once? What
do you think was kept under that lock? Let's have another look at his
hand, to see if there are any calluses.

One can tell a man's business, if it is a handicraft, very often by just
taking a look at his open hand. Ah! Four calluses at the end of the
fingers of the right hand. None on those of the left. Ah, ha! What do
those mean?

All this seems longer in the telling, of course, than it was in fact.
While I was making these observations of the objects around me, I was
also forming my opinion as to the kind of case with which I had to deal.

There are three wicks, you know, to the lamp of a man's life: brain,
blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out,
followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute and out go all
three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the
fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon
stagnation, cold, and darkness. The "tripod of life" a French
physiologist called these three organs. It is all clear enough which leg
of the tripod is going to break down here. I could tell you exactly what
the difficulty is;--which would be as intelligible and amusing as a
watchmaker's description of a diseased timekeeper to a ploughman. It is
enough to say, that I found just what I expected to, and that I think
this attack is only the prelude of more serious consequences,--which
expression means you very well know what.

And now the secrets of this life hanging on a thread must surely come
out. If I have made a mystery where there was none, my suspicions will
be shamed, as they have often been before. If there is anything strange,
my visits will clear it up.

I sat an hour or two by the side of the Little Gentleman's bed, after
giving him some henbane to quiet his brain, and some foxglove, which an
imaginative French professor has called the "Opium of the Heart." Under
their influence he gradually fell into an uneasy, half-waking slumber,
the body fighting hard for every breath, and the mind wandering off in
strange fancies and old recollections, which escaped from his lips in
broken sentences.

--The last of 'em,--he said,--the last of 'em all,--thank God! And the
grave he lies in will look just